29 July 2013 Parametric analysis of the effect of scattered light upon the modulation transfer function
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Abstract
The modulation transfer function (MTF) is widely used as the image quality criterion of choice for imaging applications where fine detail in extended images needs to be specified or evaluated. We present a parametric analysis of the effect of scattered light upon the MTF of an imaging system and illustrate the results for three specific applications: (1) a visible Newtonian telescope with moderately good optical surfaces which produce no significant effect upon the MTF, (2) an extreme ultraviolet Newtonian telescope where scattering effects can dominate both diffraction effects and aberrations in the resulting image degradation even for state-of-the-art optical surfaces, and (3) a visible system made up of three diamond-turned off-axis aspheric mirrors where we use the predicted MTF to estimate whether post-polishing is required (huge cost and schedule impact) to meet a specific image quality requirement.
© 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 0091-3286/2013/$25.00 © 2013 SPIE
James E. Harvey "Parametric analysis of the effect of scattered light upon the modulation transfer function," Optical Engineering 52(7), 073110 (29 July 2013). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.52.7.073110
Published: 29 July 2013
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CITATIONS
Cited by 28 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Modulation transfer functions

Scattering

Light scattering

Spatial frequencies

Mirrors

Imaging systems

Diffraction

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